Isn’t it cool that your phone or tablet automatically rotates the contents when you change the way you’re holding it to see a picture take up more of the screen?

Isn’t it annoying that your phone or tablet automatically rotates the contents when you lie down to read your book in bed? Especially when you’re in that reclining position just between vertical and horizontal and your book keeps flipping back and forth!

There’s a Setting for That!

On an Android device, here’s the setting:

System Settings

Display

Auto Rotate Screen
check the box for most of the time when you want it to rotate
uncheck the box when you don’t want it to rotate – like when you’re reading a book

On an iPhone or iPad there’s a shortcut for iOS6, a different shortcut for iOS7, and a switch

iOS6

Double-tap the Home button to reveal the multitasking bar at the bottom

Swipe right till you get to the leftmost part of the bar and you should see the Auto-Rotate icon

iOS7

Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the Control Center

You should see the Auto-Rotate/Orientation Lock icon right there

The switch is on the side of your iPhone or iPad just above the volume buttons, usually this is the Mute switch

You can re-program this mute switch to be the Orientation Lock switch in Settings->General->Use Side Switch To:

On the Kindle App

If your only need for controlling the rotate is for reading books on your Kindle App, there is an option right in the Kindle App.

Tap once, anywhere on your page and you should see a little padlock icon appear in the lower right corner.

Tap the padlock to close or open the lock. When the lock is closed the orientation will stay put.

hmmmm…. this option exists on my Android phone, but not on my iPad. Maybe that’s because it’s just so easy on the iPad to swipe up from the bottom and tap the rotate-lock there. ??